Month: May 2024

AllianceBernstein is honored to have been announced as the winner for the Most Innovative ESG Initiative: Climate and Most Innovative ESG Initiative: Natural Capital at the ESG Investing Awards 2024. These awards celebrate the best in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) funds, research and products. To learn more about the awards: https://lnkd.in/eGNNnvHe

AllianceBernstein

AllianceBernstein (AB) is a leading global investment management firm that offers high-quality research and diversified investment services to institutional investors, individuals, and private wealth clients in major world markets. We believe corporate responsibility, responsible investing and stewardship are intertwined. To be effective stewards of our clients’ assets, we strive to invest responsibly—assessing, engaging on and integrating material issues, including environmental, social and governance (ESG), and climate change considerations in most of our actively managed strategies. We also believe that strive to hold ourselves as a firm to similar practices that we ask of issues. Our stewardship practices, investment strategy and decision-making are guided by our purpose, mission and values.

Our purpose—pursue insight that unlocks opportunity—inspires our firm to act responsibly. While opportunity means something different to each of our stakeholders; it always means considering the unique goals of each stakeholder. AB’s mission is to help our clients define and achieve their investment goals, explicitly stating what we do to unlock opportunity for our clients. We became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2011. This began our journey to formalize our commitment to identify responsible ways to unlock opportunities for our clients through integrating material ESG factors throughout most of our actively managed equity and fixed-income client accounts, funds and strategies. AB also engages issuers where it believes the engagement is in the best financial interest of its clients.

Because we are an active manager, our differentiated insights drive our ability to deliver alpha and design innovative investment solutions. ESG and climate issues are important elements in forming insights and in presenting potential risks and opportunities that can have an effect on the performance of the companies and issuers that we invest in and the portfolios that we build.

Our values provide a framework for the behaviors and actions that deliver on our purpose and mission. Values align our actions. Each value emerges from the firm’s collective character—yet is also aspirational.

Invest in One Another means that we have a strong organizational culture where diversity is celebrated and mentorship is critical to our success. When we invest in one another, we empower our employees to reach their potential, so that they can help our clients realize theirs. This enables us to partner with clients to design and deliver improved investment outcomes.Strive for Distinctive Knowledge means that we collaboratively identify creative solutions to clients’ economic, ESG and climate- related investment challenges through our expertise in a wide range of investment disciplines, close collaboration among our investment experts and creative solutions.Speak with Courage and Conviction informs how we engage our AB colleagues and issuers. We seek to learn from other parts of our business to strengthen our own views. And we engage issuers for insight and action by sharing ideas and best practices.Act with Integrity—Always is the bedrock of our relationships and has specific meaning for our business. Unlike many other asset managers, we’re singularly focused on providing asset management and research to our clients. We don’t engage in activities that could be distracting, or create conflicts—such as investment banking, insurance writing, commercial banking or proprietary trading for our own account. We are unconflicted and fully accountable.

As of September 30, 2023, AB had $669B in assets under management, $458B of which were ESG-integrated. Additional information about AB may be found on our website, www.alliancebernstein.com.

Learn more about AB’s approach to responsibility here.

May 1, 2024 /3BL/ – In honor of National Military Appreciation Month in May, HSN Together for Good is raising awareness and support for Foundation for Women Warriors (“FFWW”), a 103 year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring and empowering the women veterans community.

HSN Together for Good (formally known as ‘HSN Cares’), the philanthropic arm of HSN, is dedicated to bridging gaps in disparities between men and women in wealth, representation, and health care access.

During the month of May, HSN will match customer donations up to $75,000. On Memorial Day (5/27), HSN will match customer donations up to an additional $25,000 with all proceeds benefiting FFWW. Foundation for Women Warriors programs work to enhance the personal and economic well-being of women veterans and strive to address the growing needs of the increasing population of military women transitioning to civilian life by providing access to scholarships, internships, and mentorship opportunities.

FFWW helps women veterans create a stable foundation by offering personal and professional development services, financial management aid, and education. It holistically addresses the unique needs of women veterans and facilitates an environment where women veterans engage and support one another. FFWW programming and resources enable women veterans to better their overall wellbeing, gain employment, and enhance family stability.

To show your support and learn more, visit HSN.com.

Koch Industries

The unique wood structure of 619 Ponce in downtown Atlanta is the result of collaboration with customers on their unmet needs, innovative thinking and a focus on long-term value creation. When completed, it will be the largest mass timber building made from southern yellow pine and showcase the benefits of challenging traditional construction methods.

The building at 619 Ponce in downtown Atlanta is no ordinary building. It stands out from its concrete and steel counterparts because its columns, beams and floors are crafted from large pieces of glued-together wood known as mass timber.

Driven by a partnership between Georgia-Pacific, Jamestown, a global real estate investment and management firm, and SmartLam North America, 619 Ponce aims to demonstrate the viability of using mass timber in large-scale construction and give a real-world example of how it reduces construction time, improves site safety and reduces carbon emissions compared to traditional concrete and steel buildings.

Mass timber is typically made from species of wood that are imported from Europe or Canada, but Jamestown wanted to use materials sourced a little closer to where the building was being constructed. It chose to use southern yellow pine, a type of timber readily available in the southeastern United States, but that hadn’t really been extensively used in the manufacturing of mass timber. Anyone taking on the project would need to be willing to innovate and experiment.

“Most folks just say, ‘This is what we offer and don’t ask for anything else,’” says Derek Ratchford, CEO of SmartLam North America. “They told me you’re wanting vanilla ice cream mixed with chocolate and sprinkles on top. We do vanilla ice cream. If you want vanilla ice cream, call me.”

SmartLam takes the smaller pieces of lumber produced by companies like Georgia-Pacific and forms them into the mass timber beams and floors specified by a building’s architects and engineers. The process demands very specific quality requirements – wood that is about 5% drier than typical construction lumber and that is aesthetically pleasing with minimal flaws or knots.

“We’ve gone through this with a lot of folks that just say, you know what? It’s too much trouble. We’re not interested,” Derek says. “But Georgia-Pacific didn’t shut the door on the idea.”

Fritz Mason, president of Georgia-Pacific’s lumber business, says that’s because the company saw the potential long-term value of developing the capabilities required to serve customers in this growing new market, even if that means disrupting the typical ways they operate.

“Not every producer is willing to invest the resources or has the capability to pursue that specialization,” Fritz says. “We’re trying to look for opportunities where we can profitably add value to what we produce for our customers.”

Recent investments in modernization and the construction of a state-of-the-art lumber mill in Albany, Georgia, he says, allowed Georgia-Pacific to gain a technological advantage and meet SmartLam’s requirements.

Georgia-Pacific also benefitted from having employees who embrace creative destruction – being willing to make changes on the fly and modify their processes.

“It forced us to go way outside of our comfort zone,” says Brian Garrett, kiln asset center owner at Georgia-Pacific. He oversees all of the drying operations at the company’s mills and helped lead the team on the 619 Ponce project.

He says they had to completely rethink their process from beginning to end. It was difficult, but ultimately, they proved they were able to safely provide a quality product that others couldn’t.

“It forced us to go way outside our comfort zone.”

BRIAN GARRETT

Kiln Asset Center Owner, Georgia-Pacific

John Mulcahy, Georgia-Pacific’s vice president of stewardship, says constructing buildings using mass timber has many benefits. Because all the parts are manufactured off-site, they show up ready to be put in place. That means once the foundation is poured, a crew of 8 to 10 people can raise all the pieces into place like a giant version of a kid’s construction toy. This decreases construction time compared with traditional steel and concrete buildings and reduces the potential safety risks for workers on construction sites.

Mass timber buildings also have less embodied carbon – the carbon emissions arising from the extraction, manufacturing, transportation, construction and disposal of building materials – than concrete and steel buildings. About half the dry weight of wood is made up of carbon, which gets stored inside the building for its lifetime.

“Giving our customers an alternative that helps them meet their carbon goals is something we care about,” John says.

The last mass timber beam for 619 Ponce was placed in June of 2023. When it opens in 2024, the more than 100,000-square-foot building will house both offices and retail space, including Pottery Barn.

Fritz says Georgia-Pacific has learned a lot from the 619 Ponce project and that it’s proven to partners, such as SmartLam, the value it can bring to this growing market.

“GP just thinks a little differently,” SmartLam CEO Derek Ratchford says. “And I think that’s what sets them apart as a supplier of choice.”

WESSELING, Germany, May 1, 2024 /3BL/ – LyondellBasell (LYB) has secured a location for an integrated plastic waste recycling hub south of an existing industrial park in Knapsack, Germany, signing a land lease agreement with YNCORIS GmbH & Co. KG. The hub is planned to combine various advanced sorting and recycling operations, helping to address the plastic waste challenge and grow the circular economy. The project will be developed in phases; the initial phase will see the construction of an advanced sorting facility that will process mixed plastic waste to produce feedstock for mechanical and advanced recycling. This mixed plastic waste is not recycled today and mostly sent to incineration for energy recovery.

In total, the integrated recycling hub will cover an area equivalent to 20 soccer fields. It is expected that the hub’s initial advanced sorting facility will start operations in the first quarter of 2026. These new investments support the company’s ambition to produce and market at least 2 million metric tons of recycled and renewable‑based polymers annually by 2030.

“The industrial park in Knapsack is the ideal location for our integrated hub as is it close to our world-scale facilities in Wesseling and will allow us to develop additional technologies for the recycling of plastic waste,” says Yvonne van der Laan, LyondellBasell Executive Vice President, Circular and Low Carbon Solutions. “The integration of various technologies will allow us to build scale and offer our customers a wide range of products from recycled and renewable resources.”

“The integrated recycling hub will also produce feedstock for the advanced recycling unit the company will build at its Wesseling site,” says interim Wesseling-Knapsack site manager Stephan Staender. “The new hub will also provide opportunities for synergies with the company’s mechanical recycling facility in Geleen, Netherlands and the company’s polypropylene compounding facility in Knapsack.”

“This move to our expansion site in the industrial park in Knapsack is a key building block in the transformation of the chemical industry in Germany to a circular economy,” says Ralf Müller, CEO of YNCORIS. His fellow Managing Director Christoph Kappenhagen adds: “Over the years, the site has undergone continuous development; the people here have never rested on their laurels, but have always made a significant contribution to leading the site into the future with their innovative potential.”

About LyondellBasell
We are LyondellBasell – a leader in the global chemical industry creating solutions for everyday sustainable living. Through advanced technology and focused investments, we are enabling a circular and low carbon economy. Across all we do, we aim to unlock value for our customers, investors and society. As one of the world’s largest producers of polymers and a leader in polyolefin technologies, we develop, manufacture and market high-quality and innovative products for applications ranging from sustainable transportation and food safety to clean water and quality healthcare. For more information, please visit www.LYB.com or follow @LyondellBasell on LinkedIn.

About Yncoris
As one of the leading industrial service providers, YNCORIS is the ideal partner for the chemical-pharmaceutical industry. With our 1200 employees and 100 trainees, we develop the right solution for every challenge, from planning, building, and operating to maintaining. Through our young-spirited and entrepreneurial mindset, mixed with the know-how from over a hundred years of industrial experience, we provide the optimum environment for future-proof production. While we are headquartered in Hürth, our strategically located additional locations in Dormagen, Duisburg, Düren, Cologne, Krefeld, and Leverkusen allow us to be closer to our customers. Our range of services covers the entire lifecycle of industrial facilities, from planning and construction to efficient and legally compliant operation, as well as future-oriented plant maintenance. At YNCORIS, we are dedicated to helping our customers thrive in the market today and tomorrow.
You can find further information at www.yncoris.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
The statements in this release relating to matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions of management of LyondellBasell which are believed to be reasonable at the time made and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially based on factors including, but not limited to, our ability to meet our sustainability goals, including the ability to increase production of recycled and renewable-based polymers; the successful implementation of growth plans; and the successful construction and operation of the facilities described in this release. Additional factors that could cause results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in the “Risk Factors” section of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, which can be found at www.LYB.com on the Investor Relations page and on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at www.sec.gov.

SOURCE Lyondell Chemical Company

For further information: Andreas Anker, Corporate Communications, Email: andreas.anker@lyb.com, Tel. : +49 2236 72 1595